


The Taste of Coffee

by desperately_human



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Coffee, Cooper gets out after 5 years, M/M, PTSD, Post S2, Sharing a Bed, Surreal, Trauma, but also stands alone, dark but also sweet, hopeful end, sort of a sequal to "Try to Wash the Blood Away", violent imagery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-18
Updated: 2019-03-18
Packaged: 2019-11-23 20:16:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18156536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/desperately_human/pseuds/desperately_human
Summary: “I’m sorry I frighten you, Harry.”Harry startles, starts to say, “What? That’s…” and is reminded of Cooper' s occasional, uncanny ability to read his mind. He chokes, settles on, “Not your fault.”“I know,” says Cooper, oddly calm, “but I’m still sorry.”





	The Taste of Coffee

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Strange Men](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12712176) by [toyhto](https://archiveofourown.org/users/toyhto/pseuds/toyhto). 



> This is based on the same au premise as Toyhto's amazing, beautiful, brilliant story "Strange Men" which is linked above. 5 years after the s2 finale, Cooper escapes the Black Lodge and Twin Peaks (well, Harry) is dealing with it.

Cooper is looking over the donut assortment in the briefing room. He’s been back for two weeks, maybe more. No, exactly. He has taken to coming by the police station in the afternoons even though everyone agrees he’s not ready to go back to work yet. Harry can only see his back from his spot in the doorway, where he stands daring himself to go in. He thinks of snapping Cooper’s neck, soft skin and pulsing blood under his fingers, the crack of bones, those wrong, black eyes going blank. But when Cooper turns around his eyes are soft and scared, distant but in the gentlest way.

“Oh Harry,” Cooper says, and it takes him a moment to pull his lips into a smile, but it looks sincere, “it’s good to see you. But of course, if you want me to leave…”

“Of course not,” he steps across the threshold, and nothing feels any different, “it’s good to see you, too.”

“Oh.” Says Cooper. They’re silent for a minute, before he continues, “I thought you might be avoiding me. I come in here many days, and of course it’s your station, but I haven’t seen you.”

“No, Coop,” Harry sighs, it’s weird to have a real conversation like this, he doesn’t trust it. “It’s just been very busy.” He wonders if Cooper is up-to-date enough with local events to know how much of a lie that is. He talks to Lucy so, probably. ‘Are you enjoying the donuts?”

Cooper has to think about that one for what seems like an unnecessarily long time, but responds with a hearty “yes, Harry, very much.”

“Okay,” it’s been three minutes and they’ve run out of things to say, “well, I’d better get back to work. Very…busy.” Harry ducks out of the room and back into his office. He’s holding the knife from the donut display, he starts to toss it away but the weight is comforting in his hands. It’s been five years since Cooper disappeared into whatever hole in reality he had stepped though, two weeks since he stepped back out of it. Harry has spent most of that time wondering if it means that the other creature, the one who wore Cooper’s face for five years, is gone. Somehow, he hasn’t thought about Cooper, the real one, his friend, very much at all. Cooper. It takes an effort to put the knife down, to untangle the real memories he has of Coop from all the things that came later.

The next afternoon, Cooper is back, knocking on Harry’s office door with a cup of coffee in each hand. Harry gestures for him to come in and Cooper replies, muffled through the door,

“I’m afraid I can’t turn the handle. My hands are full.” Without meaning to, Harry grins.

“Sorry about that,” says Cooper, once they are settled on either side of the desk, “Lucy says you still like a coffee in the afternoon, and I believe I do, too.  But I did not consider the logistical implications of holding two cups at once and---”

“Coop,” Harry cuts him off, still smiling, “it’s fine.”

“Thank you,” Cooper smiles back, and it still takes a little too long, but maybe less. “I am sorry to disrupt your,” he takes in the pack of cards Harry has been shuffling on his desk, “busy day.”

“It’s okay, Coop,” Harry says, and is this conversation developing a theme? “As you may have realized, I’m not actually all that busy. I just…” he hasn’t thought this far, what the hell can he say?

“I’m sorry I frighten you, Harry.”

Harry startles, starts to say, “What? That’s…” and is reminded of Cooper's occasional, uncanny ability to read his mind. He chokes, settles on, “Not your fault.”

“I know,” says Cooper, oddly calm, “but I’m still sorry.”

They sit in silence, and it’s not companionable, exactly, but it’s not terrible either. At least until Cooper shakes his head as if he has come to some resolve and asks,

“Harry, can you tell me what did he—me—what he did?”

Harry freezes, he can feel every nerve in his body, he can’t make his muscles work. He should talk, or at least breathe, he should tell Cooper the truth but when he forces his mouth open all he can manage is

“I--I can’t. I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay, Harry,” Cooper is still so calm, and what right does he have to be so calm? Harry hears the scrape of his chair and the door closing, thinks of bodies torn apart and bloody sheets and the last time he went fishing, when he found a whole human hand on the end of his line and was sure it was placed there just for him.

He steels himself to see Cooper the next afternoon, after all, they almost have a routine. He still isn’t ready when Cooper sits across from him, sans the coffee this time.

“I asked Lucy,” Cooper starts, and _of course_ he did, “and she told me what I did. To everyone. To Annie.”

“Not you,” Harry says, as much to remind himself, “Him. Not you.”

“I need to know,” Cooper presses on, “I’m sorry, Harry, but Lucy said you were there. I need to know: did she suffer?”

Harry levels his eyes at Cooper’s, feels anger and affection mixing and choking him, and finds he can’t lie. “Yes.”

After that, Harry thinks Cooper might not come back, but he does. They fall into a routine, Cooper bringing two cups of coffee and Harry bringing two sets of cards so they can play solitaire sitting across from each other. Slowly, they start talking, and it isn’t the same, but it’s nice.

Cooper doesn’t ramble anymore. Harry had always felt an affection for Cooper’s winding speeches, the way he seemed to slide from one thought to the next, but sometimes surprisingly, reach a conclusion. Now he seems to tire after ten or so words, forgetting his train of thought and looking at Harry with big, lost eyes. Harry learns to pretend that it doesn’t worry him, this _lessness_ , because he can see how much it frightens Cooper. And slowly, he comes to find that it doesn’t trouble him any longer. Cooper is different, less talkative, less interested in local wildlife, less vibrant than he had been before, but he is still himself. Honest, kind, clever, sometimes still even funny.

In mid-fall, there’s a staff party, and Harry says,

“It’s really more of a Lucy’s-and-Andy’s-friends party, but you might as well come, you basically work here. They’re meeting in the Double R.  I’m heading over now” He expects—hopes—that Cooper will smile, maybe make a self-deprecating joke about not really working, but be pleased. But instead Cooper seems to shrink in his chair, face clouding over with what looks like shame.

“I can’t do crowds anymore. I can’t be around people and I can’t stand to be alone, what kind of sense does that make.” Cooper looks lost, the way he did those first few weeks, and Harry hasn’t been grateful enough that it has gotten better.

“Things don’t always make sense,” Harry is no good with advice. He wishes for Hawk, he can never _understand_ the man’s advice, but at least it sounds good. All Harry can do is ask, “what do you need?” Cooper pauses for a long, long moment and then says softly,

“You could…you could not leave.” So they stay in the office, and play cards, and it’s a nice night.

In late fall, when no one is in the office but the two of them, Harry hears a crash from the kitchen. He bolts up from the desk, scattering his house of cards, and rushes into the room to see Cooper on the floor, holding the handle of the coffee-pot, hands dripping in blood. He feels a choking, bright lights behind his eyes, and he’s in the bathroom twisting the lock as far as it will go, _Where’s Annie? And a body twisted in the sheets. Holding the hands he thought were Cooper’s even though there was red under the fingernails._ He slides to the floor, hands clapped over his ears. Then he blinks. Though his body is hard to convince, he has to go back out there because Cooper, sweet Cooper, his _friend_ , who doesn’t like loud noises, is hurt out there. 

He steps into the kitchen, hardly breathing, and Cooper is standing by the sink, pulling bits of glass out on his palm without flinching.

“What are you doing,” his body is running on adrenaline, one kind of panic replacing another, there is a lot of blood, “you need a doctor, you’re hurt!”

“It’s okay,” Cooper says, and his eyes are soft but impossible to read, “I don’t feel it.”

One day, when his hands are still bandaged, Cooper comes into Harry’s office an hour earlier than their usual time. Harry isn’t working then, either. He thinks this is at least partly his own fault. Cooper sits down.

“I’m sorry about the coffee. About not having it. But I wanted to discuss something with you. Well, perhaps more like, I wanted to tell you something. Because I’m not sure who to tell.”

Harry tries to summon some of his I’m the Sheriff, You Can Trust Me gravitas, but over the last few years he thinks he may have lost his touch. He settles for asking, “What is it, Coop?”

“Well,” Cooper is to be having trouble starting, “Lucy asked me today if I still meditate…”

“And?” Harry prompts, “Do you?”

“I try to. But I see things, I hear things. I heard things there. At first, I thought it was silent but it wasn’t. The most terrible sounds. In Tibet, they say you can meditate all the sounds away, you can make the thoughts stop. They say some monks can stop their hearts, just by thinking it. I can’t do that.” Cooper takes a deep breath. So does Harry.

“And what did you tell Lucy?” He finally asks.

“I said,” Cooper’s mouth quirks in what is almost a smile, “I said I wasn’t sure. And that I needed to talk to you”

Suddenly they’re both laughing, slightly hysterically, until they’re leaning on the desk, gasping for breath, their foreheads almost touching.

In early winter, Cooper misses their daily afternoon coffee-break. Harry worries, tells himself not to worry, worries some more, and goes home early. He finds Cooper siting on his steps, in only a light coat with the snow settling on his shoulders and dark hair.

“I got lost.” Cooper says, “I got lost in the woods and everywhere I turned there were more trees and I didn’t think I was going to get out. And then I saw your house, I smelled burnt coffee and got splinters on the porch. I couldn’t go back out there. I’m sorry.”

“Have some of that coffee, then. You need to warm up.” Harry’s trying to keep calm, but it’s dangerously cold, and based on the accumulation of snow he thinks that Cooper has been sitting there for hours. “You could have come in, there’s a key under that rock”

“I didn’t want to….”

“It’s okay,” says Harry, “Come in, stay for a drink. You can stay as long as you need.” Thinks, I could kill you and no one would notice. Thinks, please stay.

Cooper stays. They don’t talk about it, but each morning they drive into town together. Harry drops Cooper at the Double R, where it turns out he’s been spending most of his mornings, and heads to the station. If there’s work to be done, which there often isn’t, he does it in the morning. In the afternoon, Cooper comes by with coffee (a cup before work, one at the Double R, and one with Harry in the afternoon should be too much coffee, but Cooper seems to be handling it fine.) In the evening, they drive home together, and then sit in front of the fire or on Harry’s porch. Sometimes Cooper reads, sometimes he just stares into space. It’s only a little creepy.  At night they lie on opposite sides of the enormous bed that Harry has no reason for owning. It’s not as weird as it should be.

Except sometimes, behind his eyelids Harry sees himself reaching over and squeezing the throat of the body beside him, asleep, defenseless. He feels the give as he crushes the windpipe. His eyes snap open and he looks over at the beautiful face on the pillow, blessedly asleep and still connected to its neck. Cooper looks almost relaxed, more than he’s seems most days. In the morning, to provoke a reaction or just to be honest, Harry says,

“I think about hurting you sometimes.”

“That’s okay,” answers Cooper, “I think about hurting me sometimes, too.” 

 It’s almost re-assuring.

In mid-winter, Cooper asks “How long has it been again?”

 “Five years. Five and a half now,” after a pause, they don’t talk about this, except that Cooper sometimes shares unsettling things and then acts like he didn’t, Harry asks, “Did it feel longer?”

“It felt. Different. Like when you have a nap in the middle of the day and then you wake up and the sun’s still out. It’s like that.”

Sometimes Harry goes to the Double R with Cooper. They order the pie.

“I always order the pie.” Cooper says, “I can’t really taste it, but don’t tell Norma.”

“You can’t...taste it?”

“I have trouble tasting things. And feeling…things. Sometimes, though. Cold nights. Your strong coffee. When we laugh. I can taste that.”

Later, Harry sits curled at the end of the bed. Cooper is so still, could be dead, could so easily be dead if Harry forgets for a minute that he’s not a monster.

Cooper sits up and says, again, “I’m sorry I frighten you, Harry.”

“You don’t frighten me,” Harry tries to explain, “I’m just…scared. In general.”

“You didn’t use to be.”

“Things happen,” Harry says. You happened.

“I think maybe I didn’t use to be scared either,” Cooper’s voice is soft.

 The truth, Harry thinks, is that he had been brave in the way of a man who had never expected anything terribly bad to happen. He had his town, his routines, and he trusted these things. Even Laura Palmer’s death, while it had knocked Twin Peaks for a loop for a bit, he had believed was only a blip in an otherwise clear landscape. But between Windom Earle and the creature—not Cooper, he reminds himself again and again—that had come out of the Black Lodge, something had shifted. The town hadn’t been safe, and there was nothing Harry could do about it. He started avoiding people’s stares in the street, hating the trust they placed in him. There were so may things he couldn’t fix.

Cooper’s bravery, he had always thought, came from a different place. Here was a man who had seen terrible things, in his job and in his life as well, and still managed to shine with an optimism that thought the best of everyone. He didn’t know how to say that it seemed like Cooper getting out of bed every day showed a great bravery, that going into the loud and crowded diner and ordering a piece of pie that he couldn’t taste demonstrated a kind of strength and hope that Harry couldn’t believe.

In late winter, they sit on Harry’s porch. Cooper is thankfully bundled in one of Harry’s coats and there’s a healthy flush coming back to his cheeks.

“I know it’s awful quiet out here.” Harry says, thinking it must be very different from DC.

“It isn’t quiet.” Cooper sits up, his voice growing more animated, “there are insects, and leaves moving in the wind, and raccoons, and I think your sink is dripping.”

“Oh,” Harry starts to move, “sorry.”

Cooper grabs his arm and pulls him back down, and there’s a little bit of the old glitter in his eyes. “No, it’s good. They’re alive sounds. They’re wonderful.”

The last big snow of the year, they sit on the porch again, even though its below zero. Cooper is wearing three coats but his face still looks cold, still feels cold when Harry touches his cheek, and his lips are cold the first time Harry kisses him. Harry thinks, he’s actually letting me do this, and then thinks _letting_ , and jumps back so quickly he almost falls off the porch. Cooper laughs and hauls him back to safety, then kisses him hard on the mouth with his lips still turned up in a smile.

That night, Harry falls asleep with Cooper’s head against his chest, and dreams of burying a gun in his soft hair and pulling the trigger.

In the dawn light, he says, “I’m sorry I keep killing you,”

 and Cooper says,

“It’s okay.”


End file.
